


My ear should catch your voice

by ctimene



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: But It'll Be Okay, But also, Canonical Character Death, Christmas Fluff, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, First Kiss, M/M, aka Stick is still an asshole, choir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-10 22:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8941339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ctimene/pseuds/ctimene
Summary: “That Matt Murdock,” they say, “he used to be a choirboy. And now he’s got the devil in him.”
In which the boys sing carols and fall in love, not necessarily in that order.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas fic! Well, fic that starts (and will end) at Christmas. I got Stick as a bitter choirmaster stuck in my head and couldn't get him out, so. Enjoy.

Matt heard the choir more than a few times growing up — a side effect of showing up to the wrong Mass when Dad slept in, or going to the carol service because Father Mark promised mulled wine. The choir wasn’t so much a choir as just another part of the spectacle, no more special than the stained glass, the rosary, the censor or the liturgy. Lesser, in fact, because the choir wasn’t sacred; it was some of the nuns, and kids from the neighbourhood, Mrs Bruni upstairs and her three daughters, one of the janitors from school. It was just _people_. Singing.

The first time he _only_ heard the choir — the first time after the accident — he fell in love. It’s Midnight Mass, Christmas Eve, and he can’t sense the choir members at all, not with the air thick with incense and candle smoke and the shuffling of the congregation in the way.

He’s not even sure where they are in the church — the acoustics throw off what little technique he’s developed so far. But he can _hear_ them — it. It, because it’s suddenly not his neighbours and the kids who avoid him now, but a single whole, clean and bright through the mist of everything else. One perfect sound. Sublime.

He doesn’t realise he’s crying until he opens his mouth and a sob breaks out, to be quickly muffled against his jacket sleeve. He feels Dad stare at him for a moment before an arm wraps around his shoulders and pulls him close against his side. Even then, ten years old, Matt sends out a quiet thanks that they always sit at the back, like the penitent sinners they are. It’s Christmas, sure, but crying is still a little _demonstrative_ for most Catholics. Better the guilt and the silence.

Later, when the service ends and everyone pours out of St Cecilia’s onto the street, warm pinpricks in the cold of New York at one am, Dad pulls him to one side, kneels down in front of him. His tears have dried, but the salt stings on his face, especially on the new skin under his eyes, where the chemicals- where it's still raw.

“Hey, Matty-Matt, are you okay? Was it the candles? Did the smoke hurt your eyes? Or was it not being able to…” Neither of them are good at talking about _it_ , so Matt shakes his head, fast and furious.

“No,” he says, and the word comes away from his lungs wet and fresh and full of feeling. “It was the choir. The music. I could hear it better than before. They're really good, Dad.”

“Really?” There's skepticism in his voice, but Matt can hear his smile. “My cauliflower ears can't keep up, I guess. You wanna join?”

The possibility knocks him breathless for a second. “I could?”

“Don't see why not. There's a couple of boys your age, doing the fiddly high bits, you know. Soprano, is it?” Matt doesn't know, but he wants to, _oh_ , he wants to. Wants to understand every bit of study and magic that made that sound. “I'll ask Father Mark when I see him.”

“I can't read music,” Matt offers, unsure why he's fighting something he wants so badly — but he won't be good enough, he can't be good enough, so maybe it's best he-

“We'll tackle that when we get to it,” Dad says, with the same confidence as a first punch. “A choirboy, huh? Your grandma’ll like that.” There's a smile in his voice again, then there’s not: “Your mom, too, heaven help her.”

* * *

Dad talks to Father Mark after Christmas week and on Epiphany, a couple of days before school starts up again, Matt goes to church in the middle of the day to meet the choirmaster.

His stick echoes off the flagstones with each step as he gets closer, but the man doesn’t greet him, doesn’t say anything to guide him to the choir stalls. If Matt hadn’t been to St Cecilia’s every Sunday since he was born — if he couldn’t hear better than anyone could imagine — a hot ball burns in the pit of his stomach. He hates being ignored just because he can’t _see_ it happening now.

It’s only when he stops right in front of the old man that he deigns to acknowledge Matt. “Found me. I’m Stick. You’re the kid Father Mark mentioned, huh? Bit old to be a choirboy.”

“I’m nine.” He’s been ten for two weeks, it’s not stretching the truth too much-

“You’re lying.” It sounds like Stick’s smiling. It doesn’t sound like a nice smile. “Can you read music?”

“I can’t _see_.”

“Not what I asked. And you’re nothing special there, either.” He passes Matt a sheet of paper covered in bumps. Braille, he thinks, but it’s not _words_ , it doesn’t make any- _Music_. Well-used, too, soft at the corners.

The choirmaster is blind. Matt’d never noticed. Before.

“You can’t, can you?” Stick sneers. “I don’t demand sight singing for reasons of the fucking obvious, but I’ve got no time to teach you the _tunes_.”

“I’ll learn,” Matt says, fierce.

“Hmpf. No point if you can’t sing. Can you sing?”

Matt sings. _Ave Maria_. Schubert. He checked out a recording from the library, memorised the second verse in Latin and German, just in case, but Stick cuts him off before the end of the fourth line, grabs his cane right out of his hands.

“Jesus, stop. You might have a voice, kid, if I had years to teach you to use it. Your breathing’s awful, you’ve no idea how to hit high notes properly so stop trying, holding this in a deathgrip fucking ruins your tone — have you even heard of dynamics? You sound like you’ll be a great fit for Lloyd Webber concerts at the community centre.”

Matt swallows. Blinks hard behind his glasses. The ball of fire in his stomach cools to solid lead.

Stick sucks his lips against his teeth. “But. How’d you find me, kid?”

“I heard you.”

“Didn’t make a sound.”

“Everyone makes sound.” He’s still angry or he wouldn’t respond. It’s too close to showing off. To getting caught.

“Not that most could hear. What about the couple outside, can you hear ‘em arguing?”

“There isn’t a couple outside,” he says, too quick. He can hear the street, the nearest couple is in the deli across the road, sucking face.

Stick hums, a little trill of something fiendishly complex. Then he hands Matt another sheet. “Practice is Thursdays, six ‘til eight. You better be able to read this by the next session. On Saturdays, you’re going to come here for training, three hours, no excuses. You should have joined when you were seven, I’ve got years of bad habits to fix.” He tosses the cane back, and it’s pure luck that Matt’s able to snatch it before it hits him in the face. “You need to listen _harder_. Everyone will expect twice as much from you. I’m going to want four times that. Now get gone, I’m busy.”

Matt briefly thinks it’s just him, that Stick sees something in him that makes him hard and cruel and ready to push. Then he goes to choir practice.

Stick does not mellow.

“Jenni, you are not on American Idol, if you slide down the scale one more time I’ll sew your mouth shut and make you play the triangle. Luke, blend, don’t bellow. Franklin, if you can’t figure out where to breathe, just stop breathing, slumping into unconsciousness would be less distracting than your gasps. Matty, you can hear me, _face me_ , maybe that’ll stop you holding the high notes a full fucking crotchet too long. Luanne, get out, you know what you did.”

Matt starts to understand though, because inside the choir — with Franklin Nelson to his left, Kate Bruni to his right — he can hear the rough edges Stick is rubbing out, the balance he’s trying to strike. At times they’re close, close to something godly, but he can hear the flicks of humanity that throw them off. He hears his own mistakes clearest of all, tries to tighten up before Stick can point the baton they both know he shouldn’t be able to sense straight at his face.

Stick doesn’t say anything to him at the end of that first practice, even though Matt hangs around after for a few minutes, until he realises the tapping of Stick’s cane is out of earshot. He’s about to head home when one of the other kids hollers at him.

“Hey! You’re Matt Murdock, right? I read about you. Your voice is super good. This is Candace, my sister, by the way. How do you read your music? Do you like the treble part? It’s a bit fussy for me, I like the longer notes. I thought you were good though. Did your eyes actually get knocked out, Mom said no, but Dad said the papers would have left it out anyway because it’d be gross- OW, Candac- _Oh_ , oh, yeah, right, Hi, I’m Foggy Nelson, yeah. Um.”

“Hi,” says Matt.

* * *

He falls into the routine easily enough. Practice with the choir on Thursdays. Training with Stick on Saturdays — everything from scales and warm ups to theory and breathing and exercises to long, intense conversations on the purpose of music, the purpose that _is_ music, always ending with a snarl of frustration from Stick that Matt can do better, be better, but isn’t _there_ yet, with time against them, whatever that means.

He’s got a growing pile of Braille music stacked on the kitchen table, Masses and interludes and aves and all sorts, secrets he can feel with his fingers and hear in his head, when he concentrates. His Dad’s proud, if confused. He shows up for the ten thirty mass religiously though, to hear Matt sing. Matt can always sense him in the congregation, the waft of sweat and powder and leather and love, and it pushes him to sing a little louder, a little purer, even as Stick scowls about losing the balance.

Practice on Thursday. Stick on Saturday.

One Sunday, Battlin’ Jack Murdock fights Carl Creed, and after that there are no more days at all, not for Matt.

SIster Mary walks him to the church for the funeral, a hand on his shoulder the entire way, even though the orphanage is only a block away from the apartment, from home. He doesn’t understand why they won’t let him stay there til the end of the month — rent’s all paid up. Dad made sure of that.

The pews are fuller than he expected, but his mouth is too full of sobs not quite swallowed, his ears ringing, to take it all in. Not until the first silence settles over the service, a service Matt hasn’t even planned, trapped in his head with his Dad’s blood on his _hands_ \- There’s a rustle, the sound of forty people rising as one, a single breath in shared between them all, and

_The tree of life my soul has seen..._

Matt can’t sing, but he cries more freely through the hymn (and the next hymn, and the last, all about green places and calm and peace) than he had before. Than he could before.

At the end of the service dozens of people pat his shoulder, take his hand, ruffle his hair, and it’s _every_ choir member, even the adults. There’s no Stick, though, and maybe that explains why they sat in the pews, not the choir stalls, why the breathing was a little out, the harmonies off balance. Matt didn’t care — it had the same sublime effect as the first time he’d heard them.

A woman he doesn’t know bends to put her face on his level.  “Hello Matthew. I’m Anna Nelson, Frankie and Candie’s mom.  We wondered if you’d rather ride with us than in the- than with your dad. It’s up to you, of course.”

He can hear the hearse idling outside, smell the cigarette smoke on the undertaker’s gloves. The man’s talking to a pallbearer- “won on the fight, dintcha?” -with a dark laugh.

He takes Anna’s hand. In their car (it smells of wood and snacks and a dog even though they don’t have a dog, Foggy told him) everyone is quiet and awkward, until Candace stretched out and hugs his arm as tight as she can, and Foggy follows suit from the other side.

“We’re so sorry,” Foggy mumbles into Matt’s suit, and Matt remembers how Foggy’s voice had quavered on the high bridge of _Whe’ere you walk_ , like he was trying to push open the gates of heaven with a single note. He can’t speak, not yet, his voice is still trapped under his dad’s body, but he nods.

After the cemetery, after the burial — and now his voice is six feet deep, and it feels like he’ll never dig it up again — Anna drops him back at the church. There’s no wake, no ten-year-old understands a wake, but Matt wants to pray.

Stick is waiting by the choir stalls. “You’re late.”

The customary vileness unglues  something in his throat. “What?”

“It’s Saturday. You shoulda been here twenty minutes ago.”

It’s like coughing knives. “My dad died.”

“So?” Stick crosses the twenty feet between them faster than Matt can think. “What’ve I told you, what’ve I always told you? Life, death, do you think anyone gives a shit? It’s about music, Matty. Choir came and sang for you today, didn’t they? Cause they’re sentimental idiots, and they think death and funerals and all that shit are important. But you know what they actually brought? Music. It endures. It’s the only thing that will endure. You wanna cry and shout  and whine? Fine. But you’ve got a voice, and the ears to hear it, and the skill to use it, if you’d bother to _try._  If you don’t want to bring do any good in this world, I don’t have any time for your pain. You’re not worthy of it.”

Matt stands there, still as a stone, his heart the only thing he can hear.

“Come on, we’re going to the vestry. Your voice will be wrecked today, we’ll work on your lungs.”

He follows.

* * *

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”

Matt’s thirteen and Stick is howling about balance.

“Break for two minutes, I need to _listen_ ,” the old man spits, before striding to the rear of the church.

Next to Matt, Foggy slumps back in his chair and grins. “Five bucks says he blames the trebles. Could be me, actually, my cassock collar is hella tight these days.”

“That’s cause you keep eating twinkies,” Matt shoots back. Twinkies are on the forbidden list, the foods they’re not supposed to eat ever for fear of coating their throats, or encouraging phlegm, or a thousand other singing crimes.

“I’ll have you know I’m a growing boy. Who likes twinkies. Nah, he’s probably just pissed at his other choir and taking it out on us.” Stick’s ‘other choir’ is something of an urban legend among the trebles. All they know is it’s called The Chaste, and Stick’s not even the choir master, just a deputy. Other than that, no one can find any information at all. They don’t seem to do concerts. Matt’s not even convinced it exists. After all, he’s the best in his section, and Stick’s never so much as whispered to him about it.

“So, uh,” Foggy clears his throat, unnecessarily. “Uh, Mom says you could come round for dinner. If you want. Like, if I wanted to ask you. Which I do, obviously. You-” Stick wheels around and starts stalking back up the aisle and Foggy groans. “Come on, he’s coming back.”

Matt doesn’t get a chance to answer but he reaches out, squeezes Foggy’s hand as they stand to sing again.

“From bar 42. Trebles, I’m paying attention,” Stick growls.

Matt settles his feet, breathes in, and prepares to soar through the phrasing. He loves this piece, the rise through Alleluia, the slow crescendo. For Stick, for the balance, he presses a little harder as he reaches the top of the phrase.

His voice shatters on the high note, scrapes against a wall inside his throat, hits a dozen pitches on the way down. Foggy’s mouth slams shut like a trap and the rest of the choir shudder to an uneven halt.

Stick’s voice rings out. “Matty-”

“I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I’m sorry, I can do better, I’ll fix it-”

“Can’t fix a break like that,” Stick says, and it’s not even mean, not cruel. Just… matter of fact. He’s not trying to push Matt any more. He’s trying to get rid of him. “You’re no use to me, Matty. Go home.”

“But- I can- I don’t-” He doesn’t have _home_. He has a bed in an orphanage and the choir. That’s _it_. Foggy’s hand is hovering next to his like he wants to touch, but can’t, and he can feel the way everyone is looking at him, the hot weight of their pity building on his neck.

“Get gone, kid. I don’t have time for this.”

He gets. He storms, in fact, smacks his stick against buildings, trash cans, pedestrians on his way back to St Agnes’, heart boiling in his chest. As soon as he’s in he snags a bathroom, locks the door behind him and tries, quiet as he can, to hit a high C.

The break is, if anything, even worse. He sits, crying, on the tile floor for twenty minutes before Sister Helene calls him into dinner.

He doesn’t go to training on Saturday — he knows Stick doesn’t want him there, the man’s forced him out of bed with flu to train before now, and there’s not a murmur. On Sunday, he slips into the convent chapel with the rest of the orphans, and between twenty children to raise, not all as polite and quiet as Matthew Murdock, no one mentions that he’s given up singing until it’s too late, and there’s too much rage and pride circling his throat to let him open it.

Sister Mary makes the most effort, sits him down at the piano with her and tries to press him into duets, but his fingers are more at ease than his voice and he throws himself into that instead. He can hear Stick’s criticism in his head — not even halfway decent rhythm, he’d never be a decent accompanist, let alone soloist — but at least his fingers never crack under the strain of a chord.

The nuns tut as they walk through the corridors, as Matt plays sacred music with _violence_ , as he spends his Thursday evenings at Fogwell’s instead, ignoring the feel of his father’s blood on his hands as he splits his knuckles. He’s fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and he can hear the old women shaking their heads and pitying him.

“That Matt Murdock,” they say, “he used to be a choirboy. And now he’s got the devil in him.”


	2. Chapter 2

His roommate is singing. At least, it sounds like it’s his roommate, if he’s following the layout of the hall correctly. He’s a tenor, the singer, with lovely round vowels and tight breath control even though he’s clearly just singing for fun, bouncing around the notes of a Gilbert and Sullivan song with sprightly vocal athleticism. It’s charming and delightful and twists something wistful in Matt’s chest without stirring his anger.

When he wanders through the door, there’s more to be happy about. “Here’s good luck to Fredric’s ventures! Fredric’s oooooh, my god, _Matt_?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Matt! It’s Foggy, Foggy Nelson, from choir, what, like ten years ago now. You remember?” A hitch of uncertainty. “You remember, right?”

Every part of him is different — smell, size, sound. Ten years and, well, puberty will do that, Matt supposes, but it still feels like he’s been caught out. He’s meant to be better than that. “Yes!” he says, when he realises he’s been taking in the new Foggy for too long. “Sorry, didn’t recognise you.” He taps the glasses and, thank God, Foggy laughs.  

“What happened to you, man? You vanished, like, from choir, from church. I’m not judging, I am firmly among the lapsed of this world, but we missed you.”

Matt turns to shut the door. It gives him time to school his features, fight the anger off his face. “I got kicked out, Foggy, you know that. You were there.”

“Well, yeah, your voice broke. But you didn’t come back when it settled.” A dotted crotchet. “It settled, right? You’re not still cracking in your twenties?”

“No, no, it’s-” rusty, probably. But “-settled.”

“Good, cause that’d be a tragedy with your voice. I remember your tone, man, that was something else. Why didn’t you come back? Katie Bruni said you moved away, but she was always full of shit.”

“I don’t think that was really an option,” Matt is, but even as he says it he can feel the possibility opening up before him. He could have gone back? It’s so long ago now, and he’s spent his time on other things, good things, he doesn’t regret the piano or the boxing or, hell, getting into Columbia law but- he could have gone back? “It felt pretty final,” he adds, weakly, and Foggy’s sighing before he’s even finished the sentence.

“Man, Stick really did a number on you with all that prodigy shit, huh?” Matt has no words. “Mom flipped out on him a couple months later, when he started in on this new girl, but I think it was really about all of the kids, especially you. And Luanne. He threw Luanne out, like, once a month. He had to tone it down, a bit. Cause my mom’s terrifying like that. I mean, he’s still a full asshole, no doubt, but they stopped him doing the creepy one-on-one bullshit. Mostly.”

“Can we-” he has to clear his throat, force a smile to keep it light- “talk about something else?”

“Oh sure, yeah, no problem, lemme tell you about Punjabi, right, I have to practise this speech to convince my mom-”

He doesn’t realise until Sunday, when Foggy puts on a tie — a tie! The man lives in a sweatshirt — and heads out a little after half nine that Foggy is still in the choir. He’s been pretty upfront about the whole agnosticism thing, but he comes back to their room smelling of candle smoke and incense and a hint of sweet wine, and his voice is warmer, a touch used. Matt feels the weight of his mistake in his stomach again. He could have gone back.

But Foggy never brings it up, has clearly picked up on something because he barely even _hums_ in their room, for all his sings, full-bodied and fucking _glorious_ in the shower. And Matt, Matt can’t work past the pride/sorrow/rage, the ball in his throat, to ask.  

* * *

He’s twenty three, halfway to summa cum laude and dragging Foggy up to magna if it _kills_ him, when Foggy drags him out to a bar the other side of campus to drink cheap whisky. They have to stagger home in each other’s arms, which is giving Matt all sorts of… feelings he’s not prepared for, when Foggy diverts them along a narrow path.

“Dorm’s this way, Foggy.”

“And normally I’d be very into this whole caveman dragging me home thing, Matthew, but I have booked a room.” A semi-breve ensues. “A music room. Not a hotel room. Should I book a hotel room?” And Matt is so tempted, so very tempted, with whisky on his lips and his teeth and his tongue, to say _yes_ , but Foggy’s already giggling.

His mind catches up to the _music_ part. “A music room? You booked a music room. For two in the morning.”

“They’re soundproofed! We can duet!” Foggy withdraws a stack of paper — _music_ — from his pockets like a magician, presses them into Matt’s hands. “Or not, if you’re not- but you should. Because singing. You love singing, everyone loves singing, and it made you happy, and I love- singing. I also love singing. Or piano. There’s a piano. If you want to. Do. That. Don’t be mad at me.”

He can’t be mad at Foggy, although the drink is really helping. “Is this why you made me drink whisky all night?”

“Yes! It warms the throat! Also, one day we are going to be fancy expensive lawyers who drink nice whisky, so we should probably be intimately familiar with the taste of the bad stuff first. And it works out cheaper per unit of alcohol than beer, but that sounds bad, so MOSTLY the throat thing. C’mon, Matty, I schemed and everything. I remember, you used to sound like an angel. _Please?_ ”

“Okay,” Matt relents, “okay, but only because you got Braille music out of the library because,” _you’re perfect,_ “I want to encourage library-going. Library attendance. Libraries in general.”

“Matthew, I will get cards, I will get all the library cards, yes, _sing with me_ .” He unlocks the music room, which is more of a music cabin, a soundproofed shed in a wooded area on campus. “There’s a piano about five steps to your left, lemme turn the heat on, _jesus_.”

Matt’s shared his piano playing with Foggy. Not so much the playing, but that he can do it. He’s had enough people ask him if it’s _easier_ because he’s blind not to use it as a party trick. But he thumbed out a carol or two when the Nelsons had him round for a pre-Christmas drink (and tried to make him stay for the whole holiday, when he had a cold, empty dorm room to get back to.) He hadn’t sung then.

He thinks he might now.

Foggy plonks a sheaf of music down in front of him, leaning across him to reach the stand, his mouth perilously close to Matt’s, well, whole face. Matt obediently reads the first few lines.

“This is a musical.”

“It’s _Sondheim_.”

“That’s… that’s the same thing, Foggy.”

“It really isn’t. I promise, we’ll move onto something from before pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock that won’t offend your delicate sensibilities, just- I wanna hear you _enjoy_ it, Matty.” The nickname sounds different in Foggy’s voice — different to Dad, and to Stick. Fond and firm and wistful. “I’ll go first.”

Foggy sings as he always does, with gusto and verve and a grasp of dynamics that ranges from forte to fortississimo. There’s a moment just before he has to join the song that Matt worries he won’t, or can’t, even though he knows, rationally, that he’s sung since the choir, _Happy Birthday_ and the national anthem and a couple of songs in bars. A brief bubble of panic rises in his throat; but then he breathes in, deep, to the diaphragm, and the bubble pops, and he’s singing.

He sounds good with Foggy. His phrasing leaves something to be desired, his posture and tone could be better, _smile, Matthew_ , he hears, in a voice closer to Foggy’s than Stick’s, but their harmonies rise to the rafters together, blend well. Maybe if Foggy could hear it like Matt can, he’d understand that they’re- but that’s a pipe dream. That’s not what Nelson and Murdock means.

Still, there’s beauty enough in their voices together to take his breath away.

The song brings them to a close on the same note, and they both let the silence hang for a second or two before the sound of Foggy’s smile rends the air. “Wow. You’re — that’s quite a bass you’re packing! I take it back, you _still_ sound like an angel — like St Michael about to cut me in two with a big, old sword. Wow. I’ve got something here we can, lemme just-” he starts rifling through the music and Matt catches his wrist. Holds him still. Just for a moment. Just for this moment.

“Thank you, Foggy.” He hears the flutter of Foggy’s vocal chords as he swallows, the quicktime beat of his heart. “I owe you.”

He hears Foggy wet his lips. “Well, there is one thing you could do.”

* * *

Foggy’s bizarre affection for cabs is going to bankrupt them when they have their own firm, but Matt doesn’t realise their secondary appeal until he’s stuck in the back of one heading downtown. Namely, that he can’t get out into traffic when Foggy gives the cabbie the address.

“You’re taking me to church,” he says, flatly.

“Mmm.”

“On a Thursday. You’re taking me to choir practice.”

“Yep.” Foggy’s plosive sounds thoroughly unrepentant.

“You said you needed help with something for your mom!” Not for the first time, Matt wishes Foggy’s ‘one thing’ had been some amazing physical stunt. Or maybe making out. Making out _during_ feats of strength, he could combine the two.

“Well, my mom _really loves the carol concert_. And the balance is off, and Stick won’t shut up about it, and you already know the repertoire and _love singing_ and have been moping about leaving the choir since the day we met — re-met, met for the second time — and the campus church is _the worst_ so, uh, suck it, Murdock.” Foggy’s heart is less confident than his words, but he shouldn’t doubt his ability to persuade Matt of, well, anything.

“I’m not singing,” Matt grouches, but he doesn’t fling himself out of the door.

The acoustics of St Cecilia’s are just the same, so Matt can pick them all out as soon as he steps in the door; the old faces; the new; the kids, scampering around — was he like that, or was he as prim and disciplined as Foggy claims? And Stick, of course.

“Hey, asshole,” Foggy yells, and Matt almost swallows his tongue. “I brought something to help your ‘balance’ problem.” He does bunny ears, actual bunny ears, and Matt can’t decide if he’s going to laugh or stop breathing.

“Matthew. Huh.” No one questions how Stick knows without seeing. No one questions Stick, period. Except, apparently, Foggy. And Foggy’s Mom. “Right, get into position, let’s try this.”

It’s different. Foggy’s still to his side, but in the tenors, and listening to him too closely throws Matt off a part he really doesn’t know well enough to sing from memory. He can hear the problem — the weakness of the bass beneath a strong alto line — and exerts himself to help make up the difference. It helps, he thinks, trying not to let his pride choke him. He’s always been one to carry a tune.

His soul doesn’t lift like it did as a child — he’s lost his ecstatic nature, to a law degree and paying rent and the sirens he hears instead of chords at night — but there’s a weight that leaves him, a power running through him, that he hasn’t felt in years. A sense of being part of something greater, and not left alone by it but included. _Home_ , he thinks.

When they close, Stick sucks his teeth, and Matt feels all of thirteen again. “Better,” he says, sharp. “Again, from the alto entry, one, two, three-”

He doesn’t hover after practice, doesn’t try to speak to Stick — doesn’t want to. Instead, Matt loops his arm in Foggy’s and finds out exactly where the adults always disappeared to. It’s a bar half a block down  — deftly avoiding all offers of lattes from the new priest who doesn’t understand what dairy does to a voice — called St Josephine’s.

“Katie, that is a flat out lie, stop that,” Foggy scolds. “It’s just Josie’s, Matt. She does a mean hot toddy, stay there, I’ll get them.”

At least half a dozen people come up and say it’s good to see to see him back, and Matt has to tap his glasses, smile bashfully and say “wish I could say the same” just as many times. He can hear Foggy at the bar, joking with everyone like old friends — _they are old friends_ — and he hears his own heart stutter. Foggy keeps giving him back his loves, and he hasn’t got the courage to give one back.

“You’re Matthew,” a voice says, someone he doesn’t recognise. At least, doesn’t recognise from his time with the choir. He recognises her from the rehearsal. She’s the alto leader, with the richest tone he’s heard. “I expected better.” He bristles.

“It’s been a while.”

“They all say that. Stick said you were good enough for The Chaste. You’re not.” She sniffs, and he can hear her looking down at him.

Stick was once a mystery to Matt, but ten years on, ten years _wiser_ , he can understand it perfectly. There’s only one reason Stick says anything, and that’s to push. If she’s heard of Matt, it’s to force her to be better. He should be angry. (He is a little angry. He should be angrier). Instead, he pities her, just enough.

Some demons you have to fight. Some, you outgrow.

“I’m not. You’re not.” A slight inhale; a good guess. “Stick’s not either. No one could be, by his measure. Besides,” and he lets himself grin, a little wolfish, as that familiar heartbeat leaves the bar and crosses the room, “chastity is overrated.”

“Well, I am rejoining an interesting conversation! Elektra, you look terrifying, as always.”

“Franklin, I see you remain incapable of taking this seriously.”

“Oh, well, I’d hate to disappoint you after all these years.”

“No, that would be your boyfriend’s doing. Excuse me.” She strides away, on perilous heels, before Matt can snap his mouth shut.

“Damn, I’m sorry, Matt, thought I was being a good wingman but I am clearly entirely off my game. Maverick and Goose look down on me in shame. I can go after her, make it clear? She hates my guts though, so I wouldn’t ask me to put a word in.” He presses a glass into his hand, warm and full of rising steam.

“No, no. Not interested. On either side, I think.”

“Really?” Foggy asks, almost puzzled. “She’s another of Stick’s miracle prodigies, I’d have thought- but, hey, you know what, I’m actually not going to try to talk you into that, because that’s not. Uh. Smart. So, instead, I ask- are you into this?” Matt almost chokes on his drink, but Foggy rushes on. “The choir. Until the carol concert, I mean, not _forever_ , but to help us out?” He sounds so hopeful, so uncertain, like he hasn’t handed Matt back a joy he thought he’d never feel again. Like he isn’t another joy Matt missed the first time around.

 _Ask me to stay forever_ , Matt thinks. _Ask me for forever_. But instead, he beams, clinks their glasses together. “Til the carol concert, sure.”

* * *

“Feels weird not wearing a cassock,” Foggy calls from the bathroom.

“In the dorm?” Matt asks.

“You know what I mean. Although this bowtie is just as uncomfortable, so no worries about me avoiding mortification of the flesh or whatever.” Matt’s already asked Jessica from the next room to tie his, and she let him go with only three rude comments about his appearance, so he’s not surprised when Foggy lets out a low whistle on seeing him. “Wow, Murdock, I take it back. Ban cassocks. You scrub up good.”

“It’s a concert, Foggy, it’s not about how we look,” Matt replies, keeping the preening to a minimum. “Come on, we need to get going.” He loops Foggy’s scarf around his neck — it’s to save time, he tells himself — and they head out into the cold. For once he can’t bring himself to protest when Foggy hails a cab. The subway in this weather — perish the thought.

“It’s gonna snow tonight,” their cabbie advises them with the wisdom of a Roman augur. They all know that. The blizzard warning’s been in place for days.

They get out a block from the church, for the fresh air (the car _reeks_ ). The ground underfoot is slippery with salt and Matt feels no shame in slipping his hand into the crook of Foggy’s arm. He walks a little close, shoulder to shoulder — for the warmth, for courage.

His hand slips a little down Foggy’s forearm. A little more. Half a block, and he’s holding his hand.

“Matty?”

“Mmm?”

Nothing. They walk on. The side door, close to the choir stalls, is up an alley that’s empty and quiet, just the gentle notes of the organ filtering through. They stop, simultaneously, beside the porch. Foggy rocks back and forth on his heels as Matt stands stock still and wishes they weren’t both wearing gloves.

The side door, his brain chooses that moment to remind him, is where grooms enter.

“How’s it look?” he asks, eventually. Foggy peers round the gap in the door.

“Festive. Very festive. A cello of infinite fest, one might say, if there was a string quartet instead of the organ. We’re the first ones here, I think, we could go in-”

Matt puts his other hand on his arm to stop him, feeling something a little like desperation. “Not yet. Fresh air.” Something, something like a high note, or a harmony, or a descant, is in his grasp, Matt knows it, something perfect and pure, he just needs the technique. “So, decorations? Holly, ivy?”

“Both full grown.”

Ah. Yes. A theme emerges. “Any mistletoe?”

Foggy swallows. His tone, when he speaks, is aiming for, and not quite hitting, jovial. “You wanna kiss me, Murdock, all you had to do was-”

Foggy’s lips are cold, his nose even colder against Matt’s cheek, but he brings a warm, mittened hand up to the other side of his face and Matt winds his free arm like a second scarf around his neck. Then Foggy’s arm is around his waist and the buttons on their coast catch and clink as Matt nips at the seam of Foggy’s mouth, presses in.

He kisses Foggy until his breath feels warmed by it, until his fingertips tingle, until he hears Kate Bruni and her sisters near the corner. The first flakes of snow are falling when he pulls away with a final brush of lips.

Foggy’s breathing is heavy. “I- I did not have you down for Romance, capital R.”

“It was kinda spontaneous,” Matt admits. “The Romance. Not the kissing. That was more anticipated.”

“Yeah. I mean, I also. Anticipated. No. Well. More, hoped? This is- I’m really happy right now.” He sounds it. Matt’s learnt his voice, twice, the treble and the tenor, every thread that runs through it. Foggy’s happy. He’s made Foggy _happy._ It’s a start.

The Bruni sisters turn the corner and dissolve into giggles just on seeing them, so Matt assumes he’s sporting a very incriminating blush. “Me too,” he murmurs, before the women reach them. “Shall we go in?”

Inside, Stick takes one sightless look at them and makes a very angry mark on his score. “If your damn silly smiles throw off the Coventry Carol I’ll send you both there myself. And Coventry ain’t a nice place.”

“Bah humbug to you too, you old goat,” Foggy answers. He’s still holding Matt’s hand. In fact, Matt notices, he doesn’t stop til the last note of the last carol has echoed away and the congregation struggle out into the snow with the words upon their lips:

_Oh, the rising of the sun,_  
_And the running of the deer._  
_The playing of the merry organ,  
Sweet singing in the choir._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! I'm sorry I had to kill someone for fluff to happen.


End file.
